Employees STEALING FAKE CASH: Caught on Camera!

See this hundred dollars right here? I'm gonna look on the camera system and see who snagged $100. Bill testing people's integrity.

Other shop spaces I've looked at have just been not great. Carter is gonna crush it.

Check this out. Thinking about buying this.

I'm just kind of sketched out by that situation.

There was some sort of misunderstanding due to her ignorance. Hey, Jorge. So there's not a lot of wiggle room.

We've gotta really get things done.

You know, I know some of you guys may disagree with me.

I. I literally don't want you to buy it.

To fill out the finance information. Get 0% interest.

We can't do that anymore. The debt will eventually catch up.

You know, I could be crippled up. I'm still gonna be successful.

60% of businesses will fail in their first three years. I'm Mike Andes and I'm on a mission to fix this. I know the fear and I felt their pain. For the next 30 days, these owners will be sweating it out while trying to avoid becoming another statistic on this season of business boot camp. As long as you know it's risky. Cause it's extremely risky. This is the last week I have get through to Aaron. I'm hon, honestly a little freaked out.

The business right now is not doing good. I know I have a lot of like nice shit, but I really don't have a lot of money in my bank account.

We started with two main goals. Implement a CRM software so he could manage his jobs better and give him more time to focus on selling and growing his business.

The downfall in doing it this way is it kind of works off the honor system and it works off of my brain.

And secondly, we need to keep this massive amount of debt from crippling the business. There needs to be spending freeze there does. His addiction to debt and buying massive equipment for projects he doesn't use on a regular basis scares me. Instead of drugs, they started putting it on like other things. And what I don't want to see you do is put identity in the trucks and the equipment. Last week he ordered a brand new F450 and he's looking at purchasing even more equipment. No.

This is a couple guys on the crew. Jorge. Hola, Ulissas. Always smiling. So what we are doing is creating a new riverbed. All the rocks are falling down. So we're going to take out all the old rocks, put larger rocks on the sides to help the smaller rocks from falling down. We are going to treat the trees with fertile loam root drench. Insecticide. It looks like the ash is infected. It's probably the emerald ash borer. You see all the little divots throughout the tree? Let's walk to the back. We're going to do some planting. This is a reoccurring job that we do. We're planting some plants. Looks like they haven't been watered. I'll turn on the drip system to water those. We are reseeding this lawn. We only come here once a month, so that's why it looks the way it does. These are hibiscus flowers. Red ones. They're hearty. I recommend the red ones if you want them to last, but, yeah, we're going to reseed this with winter rye. We planted a Texas mountain laurel. Looks like we got to check out the planning, really, on these plants right here, we should not have any dirt up on the stem of it. There's a root flare, and that's where the dirt needs to be. So that's something I need to go over with the guys. And in the back, it's all going to have rock as well.

So.

I finally got. Got the courage to make a decision. Something that's been on my mind for quite a while now. One of my employees, he makes $4 more an hour than other guys that do the exact same job. When I hired this guy, I was desperate. I picked him up off the corner. I offered him $20 an hour versus $16 an hour because I needed him that day. So I talked to my foreman about it. He's bilingual. He's going to give this guy a call and explained to him that if he wants to continue working with me due to my business not doing well and the skill set that he brings to the table, that at this time, I cannot afford to continue paying him $4 more per hour. That's $1,200. I'm paying this guy extra. And this guy doesn't have a vehicle. He needs to get picked up. He needs to get dropped off at home. He doesn't know a lick of English at all. 100% Spanish. He's older. He's a little slower. I. I just can't continue to keep losing money like that. You know, if I want to tighten up this ship, for instance, I'm trying to cut back. Going to Starbucks every day or not order as much crap. You know, maybe just a. A plain basic iced coffee instead of, like, the gourmet chocolate mota latte. I'll just order, like, a regular hot coffee or iced coffee. So Little things like that where I can save money instead of being so bougie, trying to actually impactful changes in my business within this 30 days. I promised myself that I would do that, and that's what I. I'm gonna do.

This morning is one of the very few times that I accidentally sleep in. So that's what happened this morning. Unfortunately for me, I went to bed feeling very bad. And then this morning, woke up, runny nose, still feel like crap. My plan today was to input all the information into Jobber. I had a meeting with the Jobber lady yesterday that went well. Had a guy call out the night before on Sunday. He's one of my drivers. And with such late notice, I already had this week kind of scheduled. I don't feel comfortable letting one of these other guys drive the truck. And I'm putting it at risk. They're not on insurance. The one guy that I do somewhat, if I had to have someone drive, he actually doesn't have a driver's license, so he's taking a risk. I'm going with the guys today. We're gonna go knock out this tree job. We're gonna grind out a stump, and then we're gonna call it an early day. Hope I feel better. You know, I gotta really be careful with my stepdaughter. She has a weakened immune system right now. So I'm kind of isolating myself in the house. Gotta wear a mask, you know, I don't want her getting sick, so that'll be horrible.

So tell me a little bit about working with Jobber. I know it's a big change. Obviously, to me, it's not fully integrated, but. Are you moving some of the things into Jobber right now?

Yeah, I am. I've integrated quickbooks, I've added some of my accounts. Not all of them yet. I actually ran into some issues this week. We had some issues, you know, with that. The guy I suspected that was lying to me that called out. Turns out he didn't go to California. California. But I thought that was very inconsiderate of him to just bail last minute. I'm just sick of people's. You know, part of me wants to tell that guy, no, dude, you're not working for me no more. I'm sorry. I found another driver. He zoomed in. He said something about a family member was doing drugs and died. He stopped by my house last night to collect his. His pay from last week, but. And I asked him was like, I thought you were going to California. Oh, oh, no, no. We're leaving tomorrow is what he said. But I really don't think he's going to California. And then I ended up getting Covid tested. Yeah, I heard a lot of people from the expo actually got Covid. You know how yesterday I mentioned that I was not feeling well the night before? Towards the end of the night yesterday, I started really feeling like crap. I ended up taking the COVID test and sure enough, it was positive.

Wow. So is it kind of you were out where you kind of just down for a day or two?

No, I still have it, but I can't afford to get all my crew sick. So being down one driver, we can only fit seven guys in one truck. So a few of the guys had to stay home, you know, since I like, I'm the kind of the backup driver. Cool.

I know that might have turned a monkey wrench. I know we were going to go over some of the numbers in terms of revenues and things like that for next year. Were you able to put those together or. I know it's been obviously hectic week.

It has been kind of a crazy week. So what were the numbers that you wanted to go over for next year?

It's really honestly just a matter even if we don't go over it together, just, just so you have them. And that is what the revenue projections are going to be for each month in 2023. That's the first thing. Second thing is what the profit on each of those months are going to be. And then the third thing is based upon those, how much cash is going to be in the bank throughout. Because what I really want you to think about going forward is obviously the decision, hey, we're going to grow this thing. We're going to utilize this equipment that we've purchased to basically outgrow the debt. Right. And I think the big thing that I'd be trying to push you towards is keeping track of cash on hand and then using that as a ratio against your debt. And then that would be kind of the confines to stay disciplined with the debt. Because debt is just like a treadmill. You can just keep going and going and going. And especially if it's backed up with an asset like a truck. Right. What I would recommend is to kind of discipline yourself, but just have a number that's like, hey, I'm not going to go over this certain debt to cash ratio. So like, I would Recommend Like a 5 to 1 debt to cash in the bank ratio at a max. Right. Like that's a pretty, pretty high number. But that would assume that say we have $300,000 in debt, we need $60,000 or more in cash in the bank in order for us to get any more debt. I'm very confident in your ability to grow. You have all the assets you need, you have the ability to sell, you have the personality to do it. I think you're going to do fantastic in the growth side. My bigger concern is the acute cash crunch and just making sure that never happens again. To discipline yourself, I'd be like, hey, look, if you want to buy more trucks, if you want to buy more, great, but let's keep it in check using this math. And that is okay. As soon as I get above $60,000 in the bank, cash in the bank, then I have permission to go give myself a little more debt. Because we're at that $300,000 level now. I need that 60,000 in order for that 5 to 1 ratio to work out. And then it's just a matter of like, well, if I can pay down some debt and then I can make the equation work more with less cash in the bank. Right. But it'd be a way to discipline yourself before you go out and get more debt because the last thing I want you to do is to 4 or 500,000 and we're still that, you know, 5, 10, $15,000 in the bank. And just this constant stress of having to service that debt. Over the past 30 days, Aaron has gone from putting his entire business in a reminders app on his iPhone to integrating with a CRM. Very important. As he begins to scale, he's starting to think about being able to hand off certain tasks in the business so he can focus on sales, which he needs to do in order to be able to sustain this debt level.

I hear you. Yeah, I definitely need to have the discipline on that. I think you're right. You know, I, I definitely need to have a stockpile saved up. So yeah, I'm going to end up getting a job where we're going to be planting 44 trees, you know, 24 inch box trees. So I was contemplating whether or not I should buy this mini excavator. I am here at Vermeer with my nice expensive truck trailer, checking out this new equipment, thinking about buying this.

I literally don't want you to buy it.

I'm going to fill out the finance information, get 0% interest.

We can't do that anymore. The debt will eventually catch up.

In Tacoma, Washington, Dylan is looking to double his business next spring. Did you say you think we have the potential of 60 to 80,000amonth in revenue next year. Absolutely. Yep. I think that would be as a minimum. Over the last three weeks we've talked about marketing strategies and setting up a mid level management system to get Dylan out of the field and focused on selling. Feeling pretty pumped about their buy in and this whole process growing the company. However, he is still running his business out of his personal house and this growth that he's having, his business is upsetting his neighbors. We're starting to monopolize the space out here. Don't think the neighbors probably appreciate it too much. If he is going to keep growing, he needs to find a new shop space and quick. A couple of my neighbors aren't super happy with me running the business and there's been some events that are making me feel like I got to get out of the house. Let's see if we can help find him a shop space before the end of the booth. Camp.

So feeling pretty good today because our.

Employee showed up for the first day of work. So that's always a good first step.

The guy we just hired, he seems to be working hard. I checked in with Jose who's our primary trainer right now. Don't want to jinx it, but I'm feeling pretty good about it because you know, I was a little nervous if.

I, if I let the employee go.

Last week, if, if this replacement would work out. So also I'm working on my goal.

Of trying to find some, some shop space.

Right now we're not going to be able to grow at all. We're capped out where we're at at my house. We've got three trucks.